Don’t train to be the warrior in the garden. It’s a terrible reason

There’s a famous proverb that has become something of a joke in BJJ circles: ‘It’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war’. It’s a joke not because of the message that it carries, but rather because it is overused and over-quoted by white belts the world over. Along with saying that the ground is their ocean, and that a back belt is a white belt that never quit, they make up a collection of sayings that nobody needs to hear but that so many will. But my real problem with the saying is not its overuse. It’s that it conveys a terrible reason to learn BJJ.

Look at the saying for a moment. I understand the messaging – to sum it up, it says that you should be prepared. ‘Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it’, conveys a very similar message. And that’s fair. I would rather have some ability to fight than none, and BJJ provides a skill set that is very unlikely to be needed, but is potentially tremendously valuable if it is. And that’s just the problem. It’s very unlikely to be needed.

BJJ can represent a massive investment. The time needed to become good (relative to other people training alongside you) is long and arduous. It’s hard to make a career out of, there are similar benefits that can be gained from other, less time consuming, exercise, and to be quite frank the reward of a skill set that is simply better to have than not have, and will almost never be used, is a terrible motivation to train. It’s not something that would keep me going at any rate. I want benefits that touch my life in a more tangible, and more frequent way.

The benefits of training are many and wide-ranging. An activity that motivates so many people to be fit and healthy, that builds communities and friendship groups, and that provides a link to an ancient tradition of grappling that so many cultures have explored, is a fantastic one that should be celebrated. But the tenuous idea that these techniques might be used in a battle that is actually quite easily avoided, that is just better to run away from, and if forced upon you might simply be too much for your skills to handle anyway? That is a terrible reason to train. I know almost nobody in BJJ who has been in a fight since they started training. Being prepared is valuable, but the idea that it is the main reason to do BJJ is a poor one. Celebrate Jiu-Jitsu for the many effects that it has on your life day to day, not the effect that it likely will never get round to providing.

Leg Locks in BJJ: A short-ish history

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Leg locks have had somewhat of a revolution in the recent past. The rise of the Danahar Death Squad coincided with the widespread adoption of leg locks, which as a family of techniques have ripped through the submission grappling world. Since then, training in leg locks has progressed somewhat and an ability to defend them has essentially become a prerequisite for high-level competition. But why this glaring hole in the game in the first place? What set the stage for the meteoric rise of leg locks? We take a quick look at the influences and history behind this aspect of the game.

The Judo origins of BJJ

We should start with the early days of BJJ. The sport was born out of Judo, as taught by Mitsuyo Maeda (a direct student of Kano, Judo’s founder) to students in Brazil, initially in the 1910s. Carlos Gracie, and later Helio Gracie, were among this cohort of students. There were other prominent students at the time, one of whom was Luiz Franca who went on to found his own Jiu-Jitsu lineage that later Oswaldo Fadda trained under, but there’s more on him later.

Judo at the time was a much freer art than its modern iteration. Before creating his martial art, Kano trained under two Jiu-Jitsu schools, one focussing on groundwork and one on throws and takedowns. There were fewer rules in submissions, with no initial ban on leg locks, and extended groundwork made up a more significant part of the game. Judo’s headquarters (the Kodokan) was only founded in 1882, and few independent rules had been brought in by the 1910s and the start of Maeda’s teachings in Brazil. He was a ground fighting specialist and likely taught his lessons as such, but this was compounded by the small frame of Helio Gracie, causing him to develop his Gracie Jiu-Jitsu onto the anti-athletic, ground fighting focussed path that we see today. Leg locks were naturally a part of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu because of this. It could have been much different though, had his lessons started just a few years later.

If we jump back to 1898 for a moment, we see the match between Jiu-Jitsu black belts Yuji Hirooka and Mataemon Tanabe, where Tanabe broke his opponent’s leg in a submission from the Ashi Garami position. This was the beginning of the end for leg locks in Judo. (Judo did not have its own independent competitions at the time, and Jiu-Jitsu competition was Judo competition.) Only the next year, there was a formal meeting on the selection of the rules for Jiu-Jitsu matches where Kano called for a ban on leg locks due to their apparent danger. A total ban of Ashi Garami followed sometime later in 1916, narrowly missing the migration of Maeda and the beginning of Helio and Carlos’s education. There were still leg locks within Jiu-Jitsu competition, but after a kneebar in high-level competition in 1921, under similar circumstances to the 1898 match, leg locks were officially removed wholesale in the 1925 rule adjustments. Other techniques, namely attacks of the joints aside from the elbow, were also removed from competition at this time.

It was actually BJJ’s divergence from the Kodokan that allowed leg locks to flourish. The Gracies took up the sport some years before the ban of Ashi Garami, and in general the Brazilian scene did not seem to recognise the authority of the Kodokan over their activities. There was also a philosophical divergence that existed, where Judo emphasised the importance of helping society within the way it was taught, likely influencing them to remove the most dangerous techniques from their curriculum, while Gracie Jiu-Jitsu concerned itself primarily with the effectiveness of the art and the efficiency of movement. It was a philosophy honed on the streets and beaches of Rio, not in the minds of philosophers. That said, though there was no outright ban in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, the Kodokan choices did influence the curriculum and footlocks soon became an underdeveloped part of the game.

A clash of schools

The next chapter in our story brings back the Luiz Franca lineage, and his student Oswaldo Fadda. Franca moved to Rio, as the Gracies had done, and began teaching Jiu-Jitsu. His own student base appeared to focus on police officers, servicemen, and the poor of the favelas. One of these military servicemen was Oswaldo Fadda, who under the tutelage of Franca was awarded his black belt.

In the 1940’s, Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, though well known, was taught at a cost that was simply prohibitive to most people living in Rio. With the mission of spreading Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to people of all class backgrounds, Fadda followed the philosophy of his sensei and began teaching in more accessible locations, free of charge. It would appear that where the Gracie lineage saw the business benefits of the art, Fadda and Franca focussed on a more philanthropic approach. It was at the start of 1950 that Fadda opened his own school.

In 1955 a statement was made: “We wish to challenge the Gracies, we respect them as the formidable adversaries they are but we do not fear them. We have 20 pupils ready for the challenge”. The challenge was met by Helio with a student cohort of his own. There is some controversy regarding the victor of the tournament, however Fadda’s superior knowledge regarding leg locks was more than evident. The next year another contest came, with controversy of a different sort.

The leg lock prowess of the school was well known, and where the Gracie school did not have the experience in this area they came out in force to shame the leg lockers. Upon each lower body attack being attempted, the Gracie crowd would shout ‘sapateiro’ – translated roughly as ‘shoefixer’ – so as to discourage the attacks. My most accounts, the Fadda team won that event by a considerable margin.

The whole event reeks of classist division. The Gracie students, at the time stemming from the middle and upper classes, shaming the students from the working backgrounds, using a job they could well be doing as a slur. For context, a sapateiro is not someone who makes shoes, but someone who fixes old and broken ones. They would not be able to compete with artisans who would make shoes from scratch, and would instead serve members of the favela too poor to afford a new pair. I have seen the label of sapateiro in this context described by one commenter as follows: “The person who is interested in taking someone’s feet is a “‘sapateiro”. And we are not damned sapateiros, we are jujitsu fighters, we are better”.

Gentlemen fight on their feet

Shame and classist messaging have often been tools for shaping the way in which people fight and conduct themselves. Groundfighting is usually the area that attracts the most shame, which is one of the reasons (amongst others) that wrestling so commonly ends with a takedown. Catch wrestling for years was considered a scrappy, ungentlemanly pursuit, while someone more upstanding would take part in, perhaps, Irish collar and elbow or Cornish wrestling. Catch wrestling was something for miners and weavers, for the working classes. The avoidance of feet has an interesting parallel in Muay Thai, where a teep to the face might be considered a mark of great disrespect.

More recently MMA has been described as ‘human cockfighting’, while boxing is promoted as a proper sport. At late as 2017 Meryl Streep, as part of her speech at the Golden Globes, announced that Mixed Martial Arts are ‘not the arts’. Considering the setting, the classist undertones are once again all too obvious.

It certainly seems that though the Jiu-Jitsu community has accepted groundfighting as a completely legitimate way to fight, they have still managed to find something that is beneath them. In this case, it is footlocks. Even in 1996 at the first Pan American games, Eddie Bravo recounts a story of being on a deep toehold and being booed into letting go. Jean Jacques Machado was his coach at the time, who upon seeing the reaction of the crowd had to implore Bravo to let go. Poetically, shoes were launched by the crowd for Eddie’s efforts. How times have changed.

Foot locks have been kept alive in different places in the world. Catch Wrestling, as mentioned, had a wide array of foot locks, and through this influence Sambo adopted a similar game. Foot lock specialists in Japan, such as Iminari and Sakuraba, give evidence of a different culture in East Asia despite the proximity of the Kodokan. The explosion of Jiu-Jitsu in North America (and thereby in communities that did not have the same aversion to sapateiros) allowed the range of lower body attacks to grow and multiply, and I don’t think that it is any surprise that it was on the coasts of the USA (with 10th Planet in California, and Renzo Gracie’s in New York) that the leg lock game really began to take off in a big way.

The revolution

And so that brings us to the latest chapter in our story – the rise and acceptance of leg locks. Cultural biases (and potentially influences of the Kodokan) led to a huge deficit in the development of leg attacks within Jiu-Jitsu. It’s well known that Dean Lister said to Danaher ‘Why would you ignore 50% of the human body?’, and it is important to note that his Jiu-Jitsu career was precluded by winning titles in national Sambo competition, as well as high school wrestling. Lister was in a perfect position to explore those techniques that were shunned by the BJJ community.

The stage was set at that point. The inquisitive mind of Danaher, directed by Lister and with access to the resources and students of Renzo Gracie’s academy in New York, set upon exploiting the gap in the submission grappling game. Along with early adopters such as Eddie Cummings, Gary Tonon, and Gordon Ryan, they looked to build on the leg lock foundations that had been laid by their predecessors. And so they developed the leg lock system in ernest.

That now-famous systematised approach was clearly tremendously effective in practice, and the next task was to demonstrate this in high-level competition. There were, of course, lower level competitions where the leg lock game was tested, but I think it was in the early EBI’s where things became most clear. In 2014 Tonon won the first Welterweight EBI with three of four leg lock finishes. In 2015 Gary finished his first opponent in EBI 3 with a heel hook, and Eddie finished his first two opponents with heel hooks before losing to Tonon. At EBI 4 Cummings finished four of four opponents with heel hooks to take the title. There was a pattern emerging, and leg locks had clearly made an impression in high-level submission grappling.

So what is the situation now? Leg locks are an undeniable part of the grappling curriculum. Outside of the Danaher Death Squad, there are far more than individual, terrifying outliers such as Rousimar Palhares (who I would be remiss for not mentioning in this article). Leg lock specialists have become a staple. From Absolute MMA, Craig Jones stormed onto the BJJ scene and tapped out the legend Leandro Lo after softening him up with a leg lock. Lachlan Giles from the same team was heralded as a hero after coming third in the 2019 ADCC absolute, again using leg locks (this time, his own system, different from that designed by the DDS). Finally, in 2021 the IBJJF officially sanctioned no-gi leg locks in their brown and black belt divisions. Times are changing.

Leg locks are no longer shamed by the community, and there’s even something to be said for being the leg lock specialist at your gym. Entire games are built around these techniques, and tournaments are won and lost on a proper understanding of them. They can still be a blind spot in gyms though. It’s happened on more than a few occasions where I have visited places, only to find it is part of the game that few there know. I myself realised not so long ago that I had neglected this part of the game, and it was in need of serious development. There is a little way to go yet until they are fully integrated at all levels. There will be evolutions to come, and I am interested to see what the future brings us.

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The ciminally under-scoring moves of BJJ

Anyone who knows me will have heard my complaints about the IBJJF rule-set. It’s not that I don’t like the entire system – on the contrary, it’s a pretty effective setup for awarding top position, advancing on your opponent, and generally getting the better of them. I’m not a fan of the limited leg-locks and the artificial encouragement of the guard (oh, and turtle is a guard, even if it’s not rewarded the same) but those are for another time. No, my issues here are based around the inconsistencies of back control, the fact that the IBJJF appears to have just dismissed some of the most potent attacks in the sport, and what counts as a scoring position.

Issue number one – we’re starting with the smallest issue here. A common mantra when teaching about back control is to forbid crossing of the feet under any circumstances, for fear of being ankle locked and suffering one of the most humiliating defeats possible in BJJ. I won’t deny that I, too, fear being beaten in such a way, but it doesn’t take a great deal of expertise to work out when you can and cannot cross the feet. Above the hips, you’re essentially safe. Now I’m sure that there are times when a specialist can finish you even here, but these times are few and far between, and crossing of the feet inherrently gives a harder time in breaking the control. If there’s no immediate submission threat to the foot crosser, why not reward the position? And if there is an immediate submission threat, the match is going to be over sharpish.

It’s probably a good time now to ask what the scoring criteria really are. I’ve heard it previously said that they relate to ability to strike; this makes sense, to an extent, but there are glaring inconsistencies. Just look at MMA for a comparison – striking from half guard is much easier than side control, and having feet crossed on the back makes no real difference; the main thing to note is that people dont even go for ‘full’ back control if they’re looking to strike. Just have a look at any recent Cage Warriors cards and you’ll see people wrist riding and controlling the hips to deal strikes. Jumping on the back for G&P is a thing of the past in MMA, and if this is the criteria there are no reasons why knee on belly should score any more than half or three-quarter mount.

The alternative scoring criteria is control and the ability to threaten submissions. This at least encourages back control in a jiu-jitsu style, but there is no good reason for hooks being the only control method. So long as your opponent can’t escape, it doesn’t matter how you have the back – feet crossed, one standard and one butterfly hook, or no hooks at all. Not to mention, side control really should be the scoring position rather than passing the guard. But I’m digressing a little – suffice to say, whether it is ability to deal damage with strikes or ability to threaten submissions, every position here trumps the very limited form of back control that the IBJJF deems as scoring.

The next position discussed is the most universally recognised as unappreciated by the IBJJF – the body triangle. You have to have been living under a rock for this not to be obvious, with the body triangle steamrolling through as the control of choice in high-level competition for all rule-sets and all weight divisions. It’s so effective, and so similar to the double hooks back control, that people will frequently secure back position in the scoring manner, wait for points, and then transition to the body triangle for more effective control. Why on earth the body triangle with a seatbelt is not considered a scoring position escapes me. It provides the same submission opportunities, the same striking ability, forces greater pressure onto your opponent and is so similar that people will transition into it as soon as points are scored. The one thing I will say is that as illogical as it is, it’s not a colossal problem – it’s easy to move from an IBJJF approved position to this. The next position is not so fortunate.

I think the most criminally underscoring (and as a result, under-underutilized) position in IBJJF competition has to be the rear crucifix. If you want a proponent of this position just look at the recent campaigns of Drew Weatherhead, promoting the crucifix everywhere possible. With both of your opponents arms controlled, easy access to the neck, and the potential to have one arm completely free for attack, there are few other positions that create such a differential in submission ability with so little chance of escape, and yet you get nothing in terms of points. This would be so easily rectifiable. In MMA this is such an effective striking option, in submission-only this is a brutal finishing position, and in points competition it is nothing.

This isn’t just about me having a gripe over the rules (even if I do enjoy that). This is about development of the sport as a whole. I’m of the opinion that combat sports should be allowed to adapt and evolve on their own terms, to find the most effective way of doing things without an artificial influence. There need to be clear goals and values for the rules sets. Judo has impact, boxing has damage, and wrestling has control. The body triangle and the crucifix both provide better striking ability, control, and ability to threaten submissions; I’m not clear on what the IBJJF fule set is trying to promote, but whatever it is, these back control positions need to be brought into the fold.

IBJJF is not the only rule set that is applicable in BJJ, and rightly so. But unfortunately their influence is so pervasive that the vast majority of competitions simply default to the IBJJF rule-set and stick with that, and even those that go their own way are heavily influenced by the IBJJF. My issue is not so much with what they choose to reward or not, my issue is with the lack of clear principle in what is rewarded. Whether it is based on submission threat or striking ability, both crucifix and body triangle provide clear superiority over the classic hooks and seatbelt. These are demonstrably better positions in so many ways, so please, if anyone in IBJJF management is reading this, update those rules.

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Split Martial Arts

People have the wrong idea about MMA. It’s talked about it as a blend of all the martial arts, a combination of kickboxing, wrestling and BJJ, and I think that’s all the wrong way round. That’s not how fighting has evolved. People haven’t discovered martial arts individually and pushed them all together – martial arts are fighting disassembled, and MMA is the least disassembled of them all.

This misconception is probably for a few reasons. There’s the name, of course: ‘Mixed’ Martial Arts. I often think that the Brazilian term, ‘Vale-Tudo’ (translating to ‘anything goes’) is more appropriate. Martial arts really are a series of restrictions on combat movement. A set of rules and circumstances are what define each individual style, and then you have the ability to fight freely within those constraints. The one with fewer rules then is the most like ‘real fighting’, hence ‘anything goes’.

But beyond the name, people are exposed to each individual art before anything else. Judo, Karate and Tae-Kwon-Do are the disciplines taught youngest and what people get used to, and even after that people are exposed to wrestling, boxing and Muay Thai. MMA has belonged to a niche community outside of public approval. Things might be changing now, but most people only really begin to see MMA a long time after they see its ‘components’. And so it is that MMA is described in terms of things people know, but that method constrains the way we think about the sport.

A key area we can see this is in how it is trained. MMA needs to be taught as a unified sport, but education is typically split between different martial arts in an attempt to cover all bases. It’s inefficient though. You need to balance between aspects, this is true, but there’s a lot either surplus or mised out in this method. Boxing clearly ignores 50% of the human body. Kickboxing uses the wrong equipment which allows for strange defensive syles. Even without the big gloves, the threat of the takedown changes the stance that people employ. Just copying martial arts and piecing them together is far from perfect, and you miss out on all sorts of techniques that only exist with a truly free style. Other techniques, like starfishing in wrestling to prevent a turnover, are available only due to the limitations on the rules. I’m not saying that you need to train with strikes to make grappling for MMA worthwhile, but the rules you are using need to be considered to make the training relevent.

It’s worth noting though, that despite the depth of MMA, there are many techniques not covered by this sport. The Muay Thai downward elbow, any eye attacks more common in some ‘traditional’ martial arts, headbutts, neck spiking, the list goes on. MMA is a martial art of its own right, because it does place limitations on how to move and what scenarios you can fight in, but its the closest thing to real fighting that most people are able to practice.

Primality is a key reason for MMA’s popularity. MMA is freshly accepted by modern society, and as such is poorly explained by the layman, but I think eventually people will come to understand that this really is the origin of today’s martial arts, not the result. Despite being the newest martial art, MMA is the least diluted, and we need to re-learn it.

Doublethink – Orwellian concept and cage fighter strategy

Doublethink is a concept most people have originally heard of in George Orwell’s ‘1984’. It’s a psychological activity, almost a coping mechanim, where practicers edit history at the command of The Party, believing the new history that they are writing but also understanding what they are doing. Sometimes it goes as far as to believe two contrary, mutually exclusive ideas, and see them as truths. It’s a bizzare, sinister practice, and it’s frequently used by those competing in combat sports.

There are a few reccuring themes in how to approach a cage fight. One is belief – belief that you will win, an absolute certainty, a knowing that you will be victorious. Visualisation relies on this, being able to see how you will win: how you will enter the ring, how you will battle, even how you will escape when things go south, how you will finish and how you will be afterwards. Some fighters then see the full combined amount to be what they deserve, and what they will get. Occasionally, they can take this to extremes, and some go far enough to spend their win bonus before they have secured it. Without this unshakable belief in your victory, many people will claim that you cannot achieve it. It is neccessary.

Another theme is that of probability. Common concepts for fight include chaos, ‘punchers chances’, and the idea that anything can happen. Everyone knows that one mistake can end it all. MMA is a game of inches, of momentary lapses in judgement setting your career back years, and costing you half of your pay check. Upset victories aren’t uncommon, and even the best pundit and analysts have a poor percentage of correct calls. Competitive martial arts, by their nature, are very unpredictable.

What then, does a fighter do? They require their belief in victory to achieve it, and yet they – more than anyone else – they understand the nature of the sport they are in. They think they will win, but know they might lose. What else can that be, but doublethink? And it’s the only thing they can do.

Doublethink is a concept developed for a novel, but it is also a real strategy used by fighters, and no doubt by people in other fields. Sportspeople in general employ visualisation. Competitive people all over do. And yet competitive people also know that chaos happens, and that the odd are not always in their favour. Intelligent ones will plan in case the odds come out just this way. Fighting is just an extreme version of what is done in every day life, and doublethink is just one of those everyday things.

Dumplings and Double Legs – Why art and science are the most interesting things

When two cultures, with little contact and exchange of information, both end up at the same, unified conclusion, there is an undeniably convincing nature to the solution they find. As with convergent evolution, two species unrelated but sharing a common, and extremely proficient trait, one can’t deny its effectiveness. I think the most interesting things in our society are those that are considered arts, that different people bring to a focal point. They are the points where art meets science, where creative applications of knowledge find universal solutions to some of our most common problems.

This is something you can see in the simplest of things – take food, for example. A pastry, folded around to make a parcel, crinkled to form one wavy edge, is a design so universal that no one culture could possibly lay claim to it. Cornish pasties, Polish perogi, Japanese gyoza, Jamaican patties, all arguably art and completely subjective, but somehow all these chefs have all arrived at the same, universal conclusion. It might be a bit odd to talk about cooking pastry in a martial arts blog, but universal lessons are found in everything when you look deep enough.

To look at fighting, and grappling in particular, there are many techniques that have no owning discipline. The double leg takedown is unclaimable, for it is so universally effective that all arts have it in one way or another. Consider the double wristlock, or the Kimura – it has names from all over the world, is practiced in the east and west, and has been found as far back as in murals of ancient Cambodia and the Khmer empire. These are univerally effective techniques and are practiced by everyone. This is also why it is so hard to claim discovery of a technique – those ones that work well on the human body have more than likely been done before. Humans don’t change, and neither does physics.

Martial arts are the arts, but not in the sense of sculpture or painting. They are an art blended with science, more akin to cookery or architecture, and at the end of the day those combinations of art and science, moulded by creativity and rigorous process, are the most interesting things.

Why Primality is so Attractive

Just about everything is packaged and marketed to us nowadays. From the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, to the things we like to do, we are advertised and manipulated into doing and buying certain things. Everything comes in trends, and through pressure from the people around us we get caught up in the movement and add to the wave of like mindedness that comes so often. Companies will notice, adapt, and attempt to monetise any trend they see – it’s not some secret cabal organising the mass movement and attraction to each fasion, it’s just the system we’re in. The groups that market well thrive, and the ones that do not fade away.

Anything popular will be marketed to us, in this all pervasive system, and the strangest thing to be marketed to us is the idea of breaking free. It’s quite insideous, that the idea of liberation from the system is what pulls us in even further. Not only that, but these groups consider themselves so imperveous from harm there are seemingly no qualms in encouraging us to break free. How many colossal brands market themselves as different, cutting edge, and independent? A perfect example of this is Mr Robot, being shown on Amazon Prime – they demonstrate in a show the damage and effects of a sprawling, all invasive organisation, and profit from spreading the message. It’s almost exactly as the corporations behave in Black Mirror S1E2, ‘Fifteen Million Merits’. Perhaps these groups think they are impervious because they are just that – imperveous.

Despite all this – the fleeting, controlled nature of our interests, and the information churning, fasion setting, hyper analysed nature of the corporations that change the world we live in on a profound level – there are some things that can’t be faked, or made to feel shallow. Jiu-Jitsu is packaged, fasioned, and monetised in so many different ways, but the practice and experience is not something that is filtered by organizations and entities – it’s just a question of what is effective and what is not, and you cant influence that. It is one of those age old practices, in one style or another, that cannot be ruined. It lives by it’s own system.

Primal things are fufilling on a universal level, but you dont need to join a commune to have a more primal experience. Folk wrestling is something that has been practiced by all nations for milennia, and is obviously important to the human experience. The fact that it has a self correcting nature, that it can’t be faked, is what makes it resistant to the packaging and marketing which so many other things have succumbed to. Perhaps that’s why people see so many benefits in training BJJ, or any other self correcting practice – running, rock climbing or boxing to name a few things.

These things are always going to be marketed and packaged – I’m not denying that. What the self correcting nature does though is keep the essence of the activity in tact. Bouldering is ‘in’ right now, but whether it’s fasionable or not the movement, the necessary strength, and the benefits stay the same. Catch wrestling isn’t the most popular form of grappling, and hasn’t been for years, but in essence it’s not all that different from BJJ, and touches on all the same primal, wrestling aspects that so many other grappling sports have done in the past. BJJ looks only for what is effective – you can influence it by demonising certain moves and popularising others, but the truly effective techniques will always shine through in the end. Even where and when Jiu-jitsu isn’t popular, grappling arts will always emerge. We have seen this time and time again. The essence of primal activities is not something that you can alter with marketing

Primal activities touch on aspects of our nature that have remained consistent for generations, and will remain consistent for generations to come. That’s what uifies these activites that people find so attractive, and so rewarding. They are one sure way to break free from the over processed nonesense that is so pervasive in this world, and there’s something primal for everyone.

Fighting is the ultimate security

The best self defence is the 500m. I really believe that. I don’t think that any altercation you or I get into is likely going to need anything other than escape, and even when escape is impossible it will most likely just cost you a phone, or the contents of your wallet. My life isn’t worth that, and neither is my pride. Nonetheless, I’m an advocate for martial arts training, for self defence as much as sport, community, and art. Even though flight is the way to keep yourself safest, I think the ability to fight is one of the most useful skills you can have.

Locks and walls keep us safe. So do laws, the people around us, and basic human decency. These are effective methods and have worked very well for a long time. They’re far from foolproof though. Locks can be picked, people around us might not be aware, and some people just lack basic human decency. An assailant might break into your home, or your property, but the last line of defence will always be the ability to stop them coming into your presence. To be able to fight is to be able to impose your will, and that’s a powerful thing.

Fighting is not a sure thing, especially in any ‘real world’ situation. You wont know the skill, the armament, or the circumstances of your attacker. That’s why you shouldn’t do it. But when the situation is at hand, when you have no choice but to turn to combat, or when you need to defend something – or someone – who is not able to escape, that’s when it is most important. Without training, there is no chance that you can impose your will, and it’s all about having the best chance. I think this is one of the ways that fight training provides a release of anxiety for people. It provides the security you need, that in any situation, under any circumstances, you are in the best state possible to decide what happens.

The chances of most of us getting into a situation which requires violence are slim, but that’s when you need them desparately. Fighting is a last resort, but it’s a resort I’m glad to be able to reach. It is the ultimate form of security, not only for me but for people around me. It’s not something I want to have to use, but if I do, at least I know I’ll be ready.

Martial arts, combat sports, and truth

Lately I’ve been thinking about the physical differences between a sport and a martial art. Both are dependent on optimum performance, strategy, and technique, but in quite different ways – whereas a sport has rules to exploit and take advantage of, support of the public resting on one combatant or the other, and approaches to win the favour of the judges, martial arts are somewhat less dependent on social constructs. They care not for points or support or style, beause at their heart, ‘real’ martial arts are about combat, about winning a confrontation, and about avoiding damage and death. There is nothing ‘not fair’ in martial arts. Only what is and is not effective.

Combat is an ultimate truth. It’s a practice with instant, effective feedback, and any lie is exposed for what it is. It’s why ‘bullshit’ martial arts are ‘bullshit’ – they’re not dances, or spiritual practices, they’re lies. Someting like Capoureia might have element of a martial art, but it’s very much a dance by it’s own admission. Tai Chi is derived from martial arts, but it’s not presented as a fighting style in it’s own right. The danger is when something is proposed to be real, effective technique, without being exposed to practice, and the lie becomes repeated over and over through generatons. When people believe the lies they are told and attempted to apply them in real situations they can face real consequences. If you dont believe me, just take a look at UFC1.

Combat sports then, fit in a strange spot. They are the best thing we have for testing technique, but have just a few blind spots, namely the judging and the fans. Fans influence the sport in a strange way, providing a populist view on who the best fighter is, and who they should face, without them neccessarily having ultimate test of practice. Think of any ‘hype train’ in recent years – this applies to them. Judging, likewise, is a very abitrary measure. Just think of how many times you’ve disagreed with the decision, or even thought that it could go either way – where’s the truth in that? It’s why I like the idea of sub-only matches the most. Without point and judges looking on, there’s nothing to game. There’s only the truth of your abilities.

There are other aspects, less arbitrary, but more sport related nonetheless. Rounds and gloves are the two that spring to mind. Gloves, I like in some ways, as even though I am focussed on martial arts I know that the sport has to grow. Gloves with the longevity of fighters’ hands and faces, allowing them to fight more often and have longer careers, and adding to the palatabiliy of the sport. I don’t like that they move away from the martial arts and the fighting aspect of it, but at least these aspects are the same for both fighters.

Weight classes are another one of these aspects, and they’re a strange one. Where rounds have no real effect on how good you can get, and gloves potentially make you better by allowing you to train more, weight classes just limit the number and variation of opponents. They are an aspect of the sport that potentially just makes you worse at it, and one that just wont apply in a ‘real’ fight. They definitely make the sport more exciting and competitive, but they are a completely arbitrary, social construct, and you can’t know the best fighter without throwing weight class out of the window. This idea is paid homage to with the absolute class, the most prestigous award in any competition. I’ve wrestled with the idea recently about whether to stay in the weight class I am most effective in, and embrace the sport side, or if I want to become as effective as possible as a martial artist, which might mean focussing on strength irrelevent of what the resultant weight class is. I’ve not come to any meaningful conclusion yet, but perhaps the mass gained over lockdown is going to make that choice for me. Either way, that’s what the choice has boiled down to – martial art, or sport.

Training Environments

I’ve trained at a lot of different gyms – purpose built martial arts gyms, some with rings, some with cages, some town halls where we set up and disassemble things each time, some with padded walls, cage walls, or no walls at all. Some were large industrial units, some were tiny little rooms, or anything in between. The main influence on what you’re going to learn is obviously the coach and the teammates, but I’ve found the physical environment of the gym to be a very influential part of the system.

My current gym (lockdown aside) is asymmetrical. One side is a metal wall, one side is partially a fence, partially nothing at all. It’s also very popular on the BJJ front, both gi and no-gi. The coaching there is great, but I’ve got to say, the gym doesn’t lend itself to takedowns. I get most of my takedown work done in the less attended MMA classes, and as effective as they are are far more limited than I would like. When there are a lot of people, you cant drive someone back more than a step without crashing into one of the metal walls, so we just don’t tend to bother. This is what I mean by the environment affecting my learning.

There are benefits though. Before I was almost purely a top player, focused on applying pressure and retaining control of an opponent. It lent itself far more to MMA, often required the takedown, and took up far more space. My sweeps, to be honest, were awful. Coming to the more crowded sessions meant that I’ve started to stick to more guard based techniques, playing much more off my back. Top position is still my strong point, but limiting how I am able to move has forced me to get better in different aspects – my guard attacks are better, and my retention is much stronger. And that’s not a difference in the coaching, I don’t believe my current coaches are any more or less focussed on the guard than previously – this is to do with the training environment.

The differences are probably more obvious when you look at how some fighters behave. If you want to be good at ring craft, you need a ring. It’s all well and good knowing the techniques, drilling them and practicing each one, but without a specific environment to practice in you’re going to struggle to get it to a natural reaction. The same goes for the cage – if you’ve not got the walls to practice off of, how will you make it subconscious? We make do as best we can, but with limited space I don’t ever see us becoming great at wall work. Instead we put more time into all other areas, and make the developments that we can.

This is especially relevant now, with COVID-19 keeping everyone stuck inside. People with weights are going to come back stronger than ever, people with space to run more fit than ever. Those lucky few stuck with training partners will be able to practice legitimate techniques, but with so few partners it might be interesting to see how their game shifts when we all return. You can only make the best of what you have, and that of course means focusing on certain aspects – it is an unusual situation where you’re spoiled for choice and can train any aspect you like.

It’s interesting that the gym you train at might have an effect on what you learn, and how you learn it. What becomes your favorite, most useful technique, might seem set in stone for now, but might just be a product of the room you practice in.